Remembering Boris Yeltsin and David Halberstam
Boris Yeltsin, February 1, 1931 - April 23, 2007
David Halberstam, April 10, 1934 - April 23, 2007
In reflecting on the passing of Boris Yeltsin, and the death of author David Halberstam in a car accident in California this morning, I wonder how the world might be so much better if they had met and been able to work on reforming a society together.
Yeltsin, the former head of Russia, was an idealist, a can-do person, who stood down the Soviet tanks while then-Russian President Gorbachev was held hostage by the military, a visionary who lacked the ability to implement the reforms he sought. Halberstam, best known as the author of "The Best And The Brightest", understood bureaucracies, groupthink, inertia, how the best-laid plans go astray. Had they come together...who knows...?
First, some quotes from Boris Yeltsin:
A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.
It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.
My soul aches when I think about hungry soldiers, unpaid officers and their families, who have been suffering for years without a home of their own.
Today is the last day of an era past.
We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it.
Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.
And from David Halberstam:
The crueler the war gets, the crueler the attacks get on anybody who doesn't salute or play the game. And then one day, the people who are doing the attacking look around and they've used up their credibility.
--Speech to a Tennessee journalism conference, 2006
And so in early 1967, Joe McGinniss, then just a young reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, would spend a day traveling with Westmoreland to the coastal town of Phan Thiet. There a young American officer startled McGinniss by giving an extraordinarily candid briefing on how bad the situation was, how incompetent the ARVN was. Westmoreland had demanded the briefing and the young American had been uneasy about giving it, apologizing for being so frank with a reporter present, but finally it had come pouring out: the ARVN soldiers were cowards, they refused to fight, they abused the population, in their most recent battle they had all fled, all but one man. That one man had stood and fought and almost single-handedly staved off a Vietcong attack. When the officer had finished his briefing, still apologizing for being so candid, Westmoreland turned to McGinniss and said, "Now you see how distorted the press image of this war is. This is a perfect example - a great act of bravery and not a single mention of it in the New York Times."
--The Best and the Brightest, pg. 562
Do you know what the greatest test is? Do you still get excited about what you do when you get up in the morning?
David Halberstam, April 10, 1934 - April 23, 2007
In reflecting on the passing of Boris Yeltsin, and the death of author David Halberstam in a car accident in California this morning, I wonder how the world might be so much better if they had met and been able to work on reforming a society together.
Yeltsin, the former head of Russia, was an idealist, a can-do person, who stood down the Soviet tanks while then-Russian President Gorbachev was held hostage by the military, a visionary who lacked the ability to implement the reforms he sought. Halberstam, best known as the author of "The Best And The Brightest", understood bureaucracies, groupthink, inertia, how the best-laid plans go astray. Had they come together...who knows...?
First, some quotes from Boris Yeltsin:
A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.
It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.
My soul aches when I think about hungry soldiers, unpaid officers and their families, who have been suffering for years without a home of their own.
Today is the last day of an era past.
We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it.
Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.
And from David Halberstam:
The crueler the war gets, the crueler the attacks get on anybody who doesn't salute or play the game. And then one day, the people who are doing the attacking look around and they've used up their credibility.
--Speech to a Tennessee journalism conference, 2006
And so in early 1967, Joe McGinniss, then just a young reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, would spend a day traveling with Westmoreland to the coastal town of Phan Thiet. There a young American officer startled McGinniss by giving an extraordinarily candid briefing on how bad the situation was, how incompetent the ARVN was. Westmoreland had demanded the briefing and the young American had been uneasy about giving it, apologizing for being so frank with a reporter present, but finally it had come pouring out: the ARVN soldiers were cowards, they refused to fight, they abused the population, in their most recent battle they had all fled, all but one man. That one man had stood and fought and almost single-handedly staved off a Vietcong attack. When the officer had finished his briefing, still apologizing for being so candid, Westmoreland turned to McGinniss and said, "Now you see how distorted the press image of this war is. This is a perfect example - a great act of bravery and not a single mention of it in the New York Times."
--The Best and the Brightest, pg. 562
Do you know what the greatest test is? Do you still get excited about what you do when you get up in the morning?
posted by TLC's Place at 10:44 PM
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